Jimmy Reed: Preternatural Blues

Being on the cusp of something new doesn’t generally allow for folks to cash in or get what they deserve. Surely, latter years might afford people the proper appreciation, but that obviously can’t be assured. So while blues was turning into rock and singles were ready to become a secondary way in which to impart music after the arrival of the full length album’s dominance, Jimmy Reed was in the middle of everything. Working in a blues fashion, having grown up in Mississippi, but moving to Chicago and taking in some sounds of the city, his spate of singles from the fifties can only be rivaled by the names Muddy and Wolf. There just really isn’t another player from the time period whose body of work can match what Reed put down.

Having missed the country blues thing – in contrast to Wolf and Muddy – Reed was all electric guitar riffs, lackadaisical and sultry. There’s a tension to his music that comes from the combination of preternatural percussion, Reed’s wailing harmonica and trebly guitar that in concert is able to create one of the most stirring and influential catalogs in American music. It’d be difficult to absolutely figure Reed for the pinnacle of blues, but alongside Robert Johnson there weren’t too many other players that had the same sort of effect on the Brit rock thing that would so drastically change music during the ‘60s.

But as those foreigners worked out psych and blues, the debt that they owed to Reed was palpable even if by the ‘60s Reed kinda hit the skids. Alcoholism doesn’t bode well for performers and apparently latter in his performing career, Reed would need the aid of his wife, who sang on a great many of his songs, to remember lyrics that he’d been singing for over a decade. Not the best way to close out a career, but what came during the fifties was easily able to solidify his shadow looming over rock music.

As the post war economy again allowed for the recording industry to actually function, Reed unloosed a succession of singles that would become the basis for countless covers on the other side of the Atlantic. Even if that wasn’t the case, those tracks are indelibly etched in the American music psyche being donned in countless commercials and probably even playing in a grocery store as we speak. But seeing as the recording industry and rock or blues (or whatever it is) was in a state of flux during the post-WWII era, Reed’s singles were compiled for his first full length being released in 1959.

Making up I’m Jimmy Reed was work dating back to early fifties, but somehow all of these random tracks were able to create a cohesive disc. There’s a range of pacings – although nothing gets all breakneck on listeners. A few songs that the Stones would end up copping are present, but even if that wasn’t the case, everything here – from “Ain't That Lovin' You Baby” to “You Don't Have to Go” – should be familiar even to the passing music enthusiast. And if it’s not, dig.